Reflections on White Collar Crime and Federal Criminal Law

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Update: Rod Blagojevich’s Original Sentence Unchanged at Resentencing

At a resentencing hearing today, U.S. District Judge James Zagel sentenced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to the same fourteen-year sentence the judge had originally imposed in 2011. Blagojevich (known as “Blago”) was convicted on eighteen felony counts of corruption based on various “pay to play” schemes involving his powers as governor, including a scheme where he tried to obtain money or a job in exchange for appointing the successor to former U.S. Senator from Illinois Barack Obama.

Resentencing was necessary because five of Blagojevich’s convictions had been thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The court of appeals concluded that the charges based on Blago’s scheme related to filling the Senate seat may have rested on an improper legal theory. Those charges were based in part on evidence that Blago had tried to trade that appointment for a favorable government job for himself; in other words, he would appoint a successor favored by Obama in exchange for a seat in President Obama’s cabinet. (That deal never came to pass because the President and his staff refused to agree.) But the court of appeals concluded that this kind of transaction, trading one political appointment for another, was simply political “log rolling” that takes place all the time and could not form the basis of a corruption conviction. (I wrote in more detail about the Seventh Circuit opinion in this post.)

At the resentencing, Blago’s attorneys argued he should be released much earlier in light of the vacated convictions. But the government pointed out that even without those charges the sentencing guidelines would have called for the same sentence, based on the other corruption schemes for which he was convicted. In addition, although the court of appeals rejected one theory related to the attempted sale of the Senate seat, there had been plenty of evidence at trial concerning efforts by Blago to solicit other things of value in exchange for that appointment. Prosecutors argued that the fundamental picture concerning the nature of Blago’s misconduct had not changed. Judge Zagel apparently agreed.

So after four years of appeals, Blago is right back where he started: in prison until 2024.